This past week, ESPN radio personality Dan Le Batard essentially tested the Four Letter’s asinine policy towards no on-air politics and came out on top.
After Donald Trump spewed his racist rhetoric when he called for four congresswomen of color to ‘go back’ to the countries they came from while his followers followed up with “send her back” chants (directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar) Le Batard was prompted to address the Network’s gutless policy.
Here’s the video of Le Batard’s comments:
Le Batard was also sure to bring up the Jemele Hill situation where ESPN then put their head in the sand from having to deal with the politics she brought up only to eventually suspend then bury her on The Undefeated before she eventually left the Network.
Unlike Hill though, Le Batard remained on the air as the week wrapped up on Friday seemingly avoiding any public disciplinary action. Instead, ESPN reiterated to their employees the no-politics policy despite Le Batard rightfully wiping his ass with it.
ESPN spent Friday telling employees that its no politics policy is still in place even after Dan Le Batard violated it and remained on the air without any known discipline.
ESPN officials were spreading the word through the media Friday that nothing has changed in terms of policy in which it only wants its commentators to delve into politics when it intersects with sports.
So where does ESPN go from here? Probably nowhere as nothing is going to change. The network will still continue to try and essentially talk out of both sides of their mouth as they try and do the all sports thing while trying to maintain some obvious bullshit no-politics policy to appease whatever “conservative” viewership they have. Especially since Le Batard has already set a new precedent of identifying the policy itself to be completely baseless, extremely gutless and not worthy or effectively enforceable.
Not to mention Le Batard was completely and 100 percent correct in all points made from this past week but especially when he pointed to politics — racial and otherwise — and sports being a place where this stuff (politics) changes.
